


Reunited

by celluloidbroomcloset



Category: The Avengers (TV)
Genre: F/M, Oral Sex, The New Avengers - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-24
Updated: 2015-07-24
Packaged: 2018-04-11 00:31:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4413947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celluloidbroomcloset/pseuds/celluloidbroomcloset
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After ten years apart, John Steed and Emma Peel reconnect. Set post-TNA.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The thrum of the Lotus’s wheels over newly paved streets did nothing to quell the twisting of Emma’s stomach. She might as well have been driving over a rutted cow path winding through the Surrey Downs. She had never been this nervous, not in her life. No, she took that back, she had been, but not for many years, and it did no good to rehearse the whys and the wherefores. This was now, and she would have to deal with it.

“It’s Steed!” she said, slapping the wheel with the flats of her hands. “For God’s sake, it’s Steed! Get a grip on yourself!”

But that was the problem, wasn’t it? If she was brutally honest with herself, she’d never have been this nervous with another man. It was Steed. Too much water under the bridge to treat it like a dry river bed.

It was the third date, that was the trouble. Strange to think of it like that, though: the third date. A most dangerous date, in ordinary parlance – the choice between going all the way, or going home. A point of no return, for the most part. Of course, on their first third date, she had not felt the nerves she felt now. She struggled to even remember what they had done, or what she might count as their official date. True, that a month after she first met the man she had gone to bed with him; true also that it had broken every rule she set out for herself. But she enjoyed it, and so did he, and they had been inseparable ever after, more or less. She hadn’t counted dates then; she hadn’t considered what was expected of her. She was young and falling very quickly in love; he was gentle and easy going and dashing and dangerous. He’d never pressured her and she never felt pressured. They simply were. They always had been. Going to bed together was as natural as the arrival of spring.

So why was she frightened now? Why did her stomach insist upon doing these twists and turns, despite the straight road before her? Because she felt it was her last chance? Or was it just because she wanted him so very much, had wanted him for so long, and now she was right on the cusp of having him?

Emma swerved to miss a rabbit that darted into the road, playing chicken with her wheels. She was almost angry at him for inviting her out to his estate rather than meeting her in town. He’d told her that he wanted to cook a gourmet meal for her – “and the zephyrs will not waft so close to the city,” as he put it – and so would she be willing to come out there? He’d put it so simply and kindly, with no expectation in the back of it, that she agreed on the spot. But of course the suggestion was pregnant with interpretation. How would she get home, for instance, if she had a glass too many? She knew he had a guest room, but that would be intolerable, sleeping a few feet from him and unable to touch him. She could call a cab too, but that would mean the long awkward stretch between the calling and the arriving. And if she was honest, she knew she didn’t want to go back home that night. She wanted to stay with him. And he…well, he didn’t look at her any differently than he always had. He didn’t kiss her any differently. He would want her to stay, but only if she wanted to.

“So what are you worried about?” she asked the windshield.

She knew the answer to that too. Sex. Not just sex, but sex with Steed. A thousand tiny insecurities, a thousand tiny fears, built to a crescendo of nerves. The what-ifs that were ridiculous but there, had always been there, were so much more prevalent now than they had been when she was young and brash and didn’t realize how much, how deeply, she loved him. The truth was, it had been awhile. Not for him – he’d been very honest, though not explicit, about his past love life. Nor was she lacking for offers, but most of those that arrived were rejected outright. Divorce had soured her somewhat on men, and the notion of “getting back out there” that her friends espoused made her feel slightly nauseous. Not that Peter had behaved badly; quite the opposite. The split was as amicable as a split can be. But it always seemed to her that he knew, for all these years, that she did not love him as she should. She did love him after a fashion, and always would, but it was not the love she felt for Steed, the depth of emotion, sensuality, companionship, adoration that sometimes pained her in its intensity. She believed that Peter knew, and that in itself shamed her.

Emma’s attention returned to the road. It was foolish to think of Peter now; and inappropriate. But without ever knowing it, he had been the unknown quantity, the divisive act, the choice she never wanted to make. She didn’t know if she would have married Steed if Peter never rose from the dead; she did know that she never could have left him.

The stud farm hove into view, its many lights twinkling across the fields. If anyone asked Emma, back in the strange days of the 1960s, would John Steed retire to the country, she would have laughed outright. Removing the elegant, dissipated agent from town seemed like dropping an ancient Greek into modern day London. Yet now, pulling up the long drive, Emma realized that he’d always had that element to his personality. He’d always seemed happier in the country, wandering fields swinging a walking stick instead of an umbrella, wearing a cravat and topper rather than a tie and bowler. And he was, of course, always at home on a horse. His estate now conveyed the two, warring essences of his personality: his love of the luxury of the town, and the warm, earthy sensuality of the country.

She pulled to a stop near the front door and was barely out of the car before a shaft of light emerged from doorway and Steed’s familiar form was waving at her. Excitement shivered through her, far different from the nerves during the drive over. After ten years, it was like starting over again.

“Emma.”


	2. Chapter 2

Steed’s smile was so warm and so familiar, as was the press of his lips against her cheek as he welcomed her into his home. His scent too – that spicy, male aroma had not changed any more than the smile that formed crow’s feet by his eyes, with their spark of good humor no amount of danger could ever kill. More grey hairs – she had a few of her own – distinguished a face lined with age but not with care. A certain melancholic air hung about him, but dissipated the moment she put her hands into his.

“You look lovely,” said Steed.

“So do you.”

He’d said that it would be nothing too formal, but for Steed casual evening wear usually at least included a dinner jacket. He wore a dark green one tonight that she had not seen before. When he stood aside to let her into his home, she brushed close enough to feel the warmth of his body.

The house was something like she’d have imagined it, though a bit larger and grander than she thought he had the patience for. They passed into a sitting room decorated in what she’d come to identify as a “Steedian” style – warm and masculine, with sporting trophies, leather-bound books, and comfortable, earthy furniture. But there was also that man’s insouciance everywhere, down to the stack of Tintin comics on a side table and the photographs of prize-winning horses balanced, she noted with a cocked brow, by photographs of herself, Tara King, and Cathy Gale.

“Trophies, Steed?” she asked, gesturing.

He grinned. “Pride of place, Mrs. Peel.”

“I don’t think those ladies would embrace being compared to horseflesh.”

“Give me more credit than that.” He waved at the staircase. “I see you when I come downstairs every morning.”

His face was serious now and Emma had to smile. He had not changed so much.

He offered her a glass of wine – sanguine Burgundy that left a flavor of peppered chocolate on the back of the palate – and inquired after her drive. The ensuing conversation was a rehearsal, the usual preliminaries to “break the ice” of discussion. Emma had already observed the dinner table, laid well but without the ostentation of the “best” crystal and cutlery – a meal between friends, not designed to impress or seduce.

That was the other problem: friends. Were they friends? Ten years had passed, during which they’d only seen one another a handful of times, and then always in the company of other people. They had been out together twice now: once to dinner in London, again to dinner and the theatre. They’d talked over the intervening years, caught one another up – more or less – on the ins and outs of their lives, discussed cultural affairs, films seen, books read. She knew a little of his work now, and he knew a great deal more of hers. But what had not been discussed was the far more personal, the intimate, the unsafe topics. Still they stood at a distance, smiling, genial, but not yet friends again. And would they go to bed together, not being friends?

Yet there was still intimacy – he pressed his hand against her back as he drew out her chair and she once more shivered at the proximity. But lust was not the same as love, and love not the same as friendship.

“It’s a lovely house,” Emma said, feeling as though she’d said it before.

“It’s home.”

“I never imagined you’d be one to retire to the country.”

Steed winced. “Not retired yet, m’dear. If the Ministry has its way, I’ll be running the show when I’m seventy.”

“You don’t sound all that happy at the prospect.”

He shrugged. “Too much interference in the enjoyable things of life. I’d like to enjoy my dotage.”

Emma laughed. “I didn’t know agents ever retired.”

“Most don’t live long enough. Those that do become politicians or pencil-pushers in the higher echelons of Whitehall or the Circus. Needless to say, I do not relish either option.”

“Oh, I don’t know: I can see you commanding a bevy of beautiful young agents from behind a big mahogany desk.”

“More like wrestling with other old men over financing, and beautiful young agents over expense reports.” He gave a theatrical shiver. “What a gruesome thought. But you’ve done a bit better in the intervening years. I hear tell of Knight Industries around the Exchange.”

Emma smiled. “The company all but runs itself now. We have good scientists and technicians, and they’re given as free a hand as I can offer. So long as the workers are happy, they’re productive, and so long as they’re productive, I don’t have to put on my corporate face, which I quite like. I’m not a corporate woman at heart.”

Salad dispatched, Steed went to bring in the main course, for a moment leaving Emma in the silence of her thoughts. She felt suddenly old, though she was not yet forty.

Thinking of Knight Industries almost always gave her a pain. It was true enough: the company ran itself, it did well, and it kept her occupied. But it was not as exciting, or even particularly interesting, as it had been when she first took over. Innovations continued, but she did not have a hand in them; her own scientific interests had not vanished, but dried. She could think of no research she wanted to embark on, yet she longed to do something. The word, if she looked for it, was boredom.

Steed served the meal with the same boyish excitement he always did, presenting the dish with a flourish and refusing to allow her to serve herself. She also did not miss the symbolism of the meal itself – beef bourguignon, cooked the way she liked it, exquisitely spiced…a real specialty of Steed’s, and one which they had often cooked together. He had made a good choice, she felt with a pang.

They ate. They talked, still about nothing. Relaxing and unconstrained, he was charming without apparent effort and it was hard – very hard – to look away from the grey eyes that looked on her with such unconcealed affection.

“…caught a bullet for my troubles, but it all came out right.” Steed moved his arm. “Paris was beautiful as always.”

“Yes,” she said. “I still adore Paris. Do you remember…”

She paused, belatedly realizing that the story she intended to tell involved not Steed, but Peter.

“Well, it’s been awhile since I’ve been,” she managed to finish, feeling the lameness of her response. Steed felt it too, she could see it in his face.

“Emma,” he said, setting his wine glass down. “It’s all right to talk about him.”

She raised her gaze to his. “I know it’s all right, Steed. But I don’t want to talk about my ex-husband with my…”

Again, she wished she hadn’t begun the sentence.

“Ex-lover?” Steed smiled. “He was a part of your life as much as I was. I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”

“Oh, we were separated for some time before we divorced. It was a long time in coming. It wasn’t painful.”

“Still, I…always wanted you to be happy.” His voice strained and he covered it with a sip of wine.

“You did, didn’t you?”

Their eyes met.

“Of course.”

He would have to be magnanimous, wouldn’t he? She’d half-hoped he’d be angry, or petulant, or at least sarcastic at the mention of Peter. But no: he would have to be magnanimous.

Steed leaned across to refill her glass and Emma realized that the meal was now in ruins on the table and still she had not said anything she knew she had to say. Was it a guilty conscience, or fear that old wounds had healed too well, leaving behind nothing but memories? She still felt the ache of that day. Did he? 

Steed rose to clear the dishes, dismissing her offer of help with a smile and a “don’t you dare.” So again she was alone at his dining table.

She still remembered parting from him in the Ministry parking lot the day they had signed her release papers. She watched as he climbed into a new Rolls beside the attractive young agent who was now his partner; watched as they drove away, the girl by his side as she once had been. Jealousy hit her, and a cruel question of whether that young agent was his partner in more than profession. She’d been furious with him then, haunted by thoughts of him embracing that girl, that child, younger than her, who looked at him with such puppyish adoration. She hated them both through the day and then, at night, lying next to Peter, her mind whirled with memory of him, his hands, his mouth, his weight on her, the murmur of his voice in her ear, telling her he loved her. Did he tell that girl the same?

It had been a mean hatred she felt, and she was ashamed of it now. She had nothing to reproach him for. When the haze of anger and pain cleared, she had known that he did not lie when he said he loved her. But that was many years ago. Did he still love her? More horrible to think of, because she did not know the answer: did she still love him?

Emma shook herself out of her reverie at the sound of Steed clanking dishes in the kitchen. She was tired of memories. She rose and opened the door to the kitchen, and surprised him in the act of soaking the plates. He looked adorably domestic, even in his dinner jacket and tie, standing there with dishes poised and towel slung over his shoulder. Emma felt a wave of affection for him, as though that image in itself dismissed all her misgivings.

“Anything I can do?” she asked.

“No: I’ll be done in a jiffy.”

He dunked the final plate and turned to her, drying his hands on the towel.

“If milady would return to the dining room, the dessert course, consisting of a chocolate mousse I’m inordinately proud of, will be served momentarily.”

He gave a flourish with his hand and Emma laughed. But when he approached her, she knew what he was going to do. She turned her head away before he could do it.

“Will it keep for a moment?” she asked, making as though she was looking out the kitchen window. “I’d like to see your garden.”

She felt the pause, avoided his eyes.

“Of course,” he said, as cheery as before. “After you.”


	3. Chapter 3

They passed back through the dining room and out the big bay windows onto the veranda. Emma caught a whiff of flowers mixed now with the aroma of their meal. Again she was struck by the two apparently warring sides of Steed’s personality, here co-mingled: town and country, industry and earth; the elegant and the animal.

She took his arm as they descended the stairs down to the garden pathway. The smell of flowers was stronger now on the chill spring air. Steed began reciting the origins of species as they passed, showing off a green thumb she had only suspected once or twice, when he grew her roses in his flat’s kitchen. There were roses here, but they hadn’t properly bloomed yet. There were no carnations.

They walked the labyrinthine paths that were bathed in soft light from the house. Emma felt suddenly aware of the world around them: the smell of earth and grass and flower, the flitting of bats overhead, the faint buzzing of crickets, the flash of lightning bugs, the glitter of stars. She felt the press of his arm, the softness of his jacket, the warmth of his concealed flesh. It was lovely and beautiful and so terribly melancholy she wanted to cry.

“Are you all right?” Steed finally asked, when they paused by a stone bench. “You’re rather quiet.”

“I’m sorry, Steed,” she said. “I’m afraid I’m a bit…weepy tonight.”

“I hope it’s not the company.”

She smiled. “No, it’s not that. I’m just tired and nervous.” Her eyes met his. “There’s a lot to talk about.”

“Is there?”

“You know there is.”

She couldn’t read his expression. He released her arm and took a few paces ahead, his shoulders half bowed as he slipped his hands into his pockets. He looked suddenly vulnerable, and she repressed an urge to slip her fingers into his hair, as she had done so often before.

“I’m 53,” he said.

Emma blinked. “I’m…38?”

“That’s not quite what I mean. Emma, I’ve spent a long and dangerous life, full of regrets for things I didn’t say, steps I never took, people I never let in. I’ve come to the middle of it now and the one thing I’m most certain of is that I’m tired of living in regret. I’m tired of wishing there were things I’d said and done to hold on to those who mean the most to me. More than anything, I’m tired of looking for love in all the wrong places.”

He laughed harshly. “That’s a cliché, but it’s true. I chase after women who can share my bed for a few weeks and who I know will grow bored. I begin affairs knowing that they’ll peter out, and leave me alone in a house that I’ve made to be alone in. I don’t love them deeply and they don’t love me. I don’t think I’ve been properly in love for a very long time.”

He stopped speaking and Emma was at a loss to respond to this extraordinary speech, revealing more of himself than Steed ever did in words. He sounded tired, as though all the charm and etiquette finally slipped away and left behind the reality of a gentle, vulnerable man who understood himself better than anyone else.

“Where do I fit in to all of this, Steed?” she said, afraid of the response.

He turned to look at her. “You didn’t, until now. I’d given you up. There wasn’t anything else I could do.”

“Until Paris.”

“Until I picked up a newspaper one morning and read of your divorce. Not the first time a newspaper brought me life-changing news.” She did not miss the tinge of bitterness, though he masked it well. “It’s selfish of me, but I felt…elated. Like there was a chance, however remote. That’s when I realized that all those years had been a very well-constructed lie I was telling myself, because I still…”

He stopped again and she knew he wouldn’t say it. He might never say it again. 

There was no space between the urge to kiss him and the kissing of him. She gave herself no opportunity to rationalize the choice, or to hold back. Emma crossed the gulf between them and pressed her lips to his.

It was not deliverance. Both familiar and strange, and wonderful in its familiarity and its strangeness. He tasted like him, a flavor that made her shiver. His hands went to her waist, big and rough and gentle and loving. She felt his trembling and was overwhelmed with a desire to protect him, comfort him, to hold him like a child. He was the only man who had ever shown her such vulnerability.

“Emma,” he said, his forehead pressed to hers.

His lips found hers again, gentle and tentative, like a kiss they once shared in the long, long ago. She felt the same desire to cry as she had been unable to cry that day, but all she could do now was kiss him.

Somehow they began to walk again, in undirected steps, away from the house. Down the garden paths, across the lawn, until the light of the stables came into sight. 

The horses began to move at their entrance. The scent of horse and hay was another familiar sensation. Suddenly the garden seemed far away, and their kiss a figment of Emma’s mind. She moved towards the creatures that pawed in their paddocks and shook their heads in hope of a treat from their master.

“Oh, it’s been a long time since I’ve rode,” said Emma. 

“Come out and go for a gallop some time.” Steed patted the head of the pretty roan jutting her nose towards them. “She’d fit you to a T.”

“Which one is yours?”

“They’re all mine, but I’m curiously partial to Bacchus there.” He nodded to the big white stallion at the end of the enclosure.

“You would call a horse Bacchus.”

“He lives up to his name.”

Emma rubbed the stallion’s head, sorry that she couldn’t offer a carrot or a sugar cube. He snorted and stomped his foot, but quieted under her palm. He was beautiful, wild, majestic. She could see why Steed loved him.

“I told Peter about us.”

The air in the stables became suddenly stiller. 

“I needed to,” she continued. “It was a few years ago. We were trying to…salvage our marriage; I suppose is the right way to put it. We went to a marriage counselor and it just came out. I couldn’t not tell him.”

“Understandable.” Steed’s voice was calm.

“He said he understood, but I don’t think he ever really did. I think he’d always hung onto the fiction that I’d mourned him all those years. But I couldn’t keep it up; I had to tell him. You were always there, you see – you were my secret from him, and I had to let it out.”

She took a deep breath, wishing she could stop talking and knowing she had to have it all out.

“We were really very different, Peter and I – that’s ultimately what ended it. He wanted a wife who would wait for seven years. I don’t think he ever fully grasped why I didn’t.”

“It seems a silly thing to expect of anyone.”

“But he expected it of me. As long as you were a question mark he could keep up the fiction. When I told him…I wanted it to clear things between us, but it only made them worse. He shut off after that. I don’t think he meant to; it wasn’t a conscious cruelty. He couldn’t help himself. Steed,” she turned to face him. “You said you were tired of living in regret. So am I. I’ve lied to myself, to you, to Peter; even when I told him the truth, I was still lying. I lied by omission.”

“Emma…”

“I never told him I regretted leaving you. And I never told you. I regret so much, Steed. So much.”

Tears came to her eyes. Finally, finally, she let them.

She cried for Peter, for Steed, for her past self. She cried for words she never said or heard; for the loss of so much, and for the terror she could never regain it.

She was only dimly aware of being embraced against a warm shirtfront and soft shoulder. She felt Steed’s arms, and the press of his lips against her forehead, and she held onto him as she’d longed to for years, and cried all the harder because she never could.

“Stay with me,” she heard him say. “Stay with me, as a friend, a lover, an acquaintance, whatever you like. Just stay with me.”

And like that, the tears turned to passion. She turned in his arms and let him seize her and then kiss her, as she’d wanted him to kiss her for ten long years. There in the stables, he ravished her with his mouth.

And she let him ravish her. Steed, who had loved her; Steed, who had let her go. Steed, who even now did not recriminate her, and said he understood. She belonged to him as she’d never belonged to Peter. He’d bound her to him without ever trying to; and because he never tried, the knots tightened all the more. The fears of the evening vanished; the questions could remain unanswered. Only one answer mattered and she knew it now. She was his.


	4. Chapter 4

Time was when they would have made love right there in the stables and picked hay out of each other’s hair for hours afterwards. But Emma didn’t want their first time in ten years to be something out of a Victorian bodice-ripper. Still, the walk to the house proved excruciating – pretending to be polite, mature adults while longing, not so secretly, to tear each other’s clothes off, though she allowed herself to enjoy the nearness of him without questioning what it meant.

They stopped in the living room long enough for Steed to douse the lights and close the windows. Emma waited at the foot of the stairs, admiring him. A very good-looking man in his middle-age. He must have impressed some of those ingénue agents, with his dapper, somewhat antiquated style, clipped and greying hair, and man-of-the-world assurance; a man who opened car doors and doffed his bowler, who always paid the cheque and ordered the wine. Well, they could be impressed as long as they liked. Tonight, he was hers.

Steed paused by the front door and looked at her over his shoulder.

“I don’t want to pressure you,” he said. “If you’re not ready…”

“Lock the door, Steed.”

A grin spread over his face and he threw the bolt.

“That’s my Mrs. Peel: ordering me about even in m’own house.”

Emma slipped her hand into his as they mounted the stairs, her stomach and heart thrumming the whole way.

The glorious anticipation turned a little nervous when she saw his bedroom, though. It too was characteristic of the man: a touch luxurious, with a hint of the seraglio, but offset by the presence of polo equipment lounging in one corner, and a hearty tome of military history open on the nightstand. He clicked on the bedside lamp and turned off the overhead light, bringing the room into softer shadow. The bed was big with a maroon duvet and matching pillows; if she knew Steed, it was also soft, the sort of bed you could easily disappear into. A niggling thought rose at the back of her mind of how many women he’d taken into that bed, how many had felt the crisp sheets, how many had cuddled beneath that duvet. Hardly the sort of thinking she needed at a time like this. It didn’t do to consider tomorrow or yesterday. Just the now.

Steed came back to her and stood at a little distance. “Nervous?”

“Not at all.”

“I am.”

Emma raised a brow. “Oh, come now, Steed. I’m sure you’ve had practice.”

She’d meant it as a joke, but he looked quite serious. “None of them were you.”

She closed the space between them, took him in her arms, and felt the wonderful realness of him. How she had missed that sense that all of him was with her. His lips were on her neck, pressing fond kisses, and then he found the sensitive spot just below her ear that seemed in direct connection all other erogenous zones. She wanted him, wanted to see him naked without pulling away, wanted to look at him while still holding him. She wanted quick, wild sex and slow, sensual lovemaking. She wanted it all at once.

It was Steed who moved back first, just enough to bring his hand between them and touch her. His fingers ran over her clothed breasts, down the soft round of her stomach, and then paused to touch her through her clothes. His short, strong fingers found the apex between her thighs, and she closed her eyes, feeling him as he felt her. She raised her hand to his shirt and found the buttons, undid them as quickly as she could to seek the warmth of his bare chest, flush with the memories of being held against it. He kissed her as she slid her hands beneath his shirt to caress the muscles of his back and shoulders and the raised, familiar scars of a storied life. There came a pressure against her stomach as he hardened.

“Steed,” she murmured against his mouth, dragging her hand around to cup him. 

“We’d better get undressed,” he said, smiling.

“We’d better.”

They pulled away and crossed to the bed. Steed shed his coat, tie, and shirt, and Emma reached around to undo the clasp of her dress and slide the thin straps from her arms. She recalled belatedly she wore no bra and covered herself as she turned to face him, embarrassed almost to appear like that before him.

Steed shook his head. “I want to see you. Can I?”

It was a gentle request, spoken fondly, and Emma lowered her hands, embarrassed by her embarrassment. He looked at her and took a long, deep breath before he came close again, bending to kiss each breast in turn.

“You’re so beautiful, Emma.” His fingers pushed at the band of her panties. “May I?”

“Yes.”

As he knelt down to slide her underwear off, she watched his head descend and wondered at the reverence with which he treated her. When he rose, his hand covered her; not touching or probing, just covering.

“I missed you,” she said.

Emma waited in bed beneath the covers as Steed finished undressing – hanging his coat and shirt on the back of a chair, draping Emma’s dress over the arm. He pulled off shoes and socks and slid them under the bed – Emma smiled at how little his nighttime ritual had changed, quickly and simply shedding the trappings of civilized man. Then he paused, wearing nothing but his briefs, and she saw the same look of slight embarrassment in his face that she had felt minutes before. She slid to the end of the bed.

“May I?” she asked.

He looked down at her and smiled, a tad ruefully, then nodded. She pulled his briefs down and off, sitting back then to look at him.

She had always loved Steed’s body, down to the inoculation scar on his shoulder, the wiry hair of his chest and softer hair of his pubis. She loved the shape of his genitals, now large and erect. She rarely admired a man, aesthetically, as she admired him. Standing there now, he was still beautiful, still perfect in his imperfection, and she wanted him as she always had.

Steed got into bed beside her and for awhile they just kissed, their naked bodies pressed against each other. Emma found all the sweet remembered places on his body, stroked his legs and back and buttocks, recalling how they had played together at night, had pursued each other, teased each other, all with the same result.

But they were both eager, and sensual exploration has its limits. He rolled on top of her, pressing against her entrance, teasing her a little before coming into her, pushing himself little by little until he was sheathed within her, as deep as he could be.

It was the same, yet there was something new in this, something new in both of them. All of their defenses were gone; all of the cool, flirtatious, trivial aspects of their lives had evaporated. Her marriage, his lovers, ten years, none of it had altered the most basic truth that she’d always been a little afraid of. Emma wouldn’t deny it any longer.

“I love you,” she whispered, holding him within herself. “I always loved you.”

It wasn’t romantic or passionate or anything of that sort; it was simple fact, as real as taking a breath. He belonged there; she belonged with him.

Steed moved inside of her. He pressed his forehead against hers, and rolled his hips, already making love to her, doing with his actions what he could not say with words. Their hands twined, fingers caressing in mimicry of their bodies. Emma closed her eyes and breathed, feeling him as he anchored her to the earth. It was perfect, erotic, pleasurable as she never had with another man.

Afterwards, they lay together, breaths stilling. Emma cuddled into Steed’s side, suddenly overwhelmed with thoughts of what they could do and where they could go. She’d always avoided making plans beyond the next day, sometimes just the next hour, but now perhaps they could.

“I missed you,” Steed finally said.

“I guessed as much,” she replied, feeling a bit of her old archness return.

He laughed and stroked her hair, then turned to press a kiss to her forehead. Emma rolled in his arms.

“You have grey here,” she teased, running her fingers through the sparse hairs on his chest.

“I have grey everywhere. I’m an old man.”

“Well, you know what they say about age.” She kissed his chest. “I’m sorry, Steed.”

“I hope we’re not going to start another round of apologies.”

“I need to say it. I’m sorry that it took me ten years to come here.”

He sighed. He collected the tendrils of her hair in one hand and drew his fingers out through it.

“I don’t want any more regret, Emma,” he said after awhile. “I meant it when I said I was tired of living in it. If you regret this…”

Emma sat up to look at him. He was frowning.

“What did I just say? I don’t regret anything about tonight. The only thing I regret is not doing it sooner.”

She watched as the last remnants of doubt vanished from his face.

“Do you regret it?” she said.

He smiled and laid his hand on her face. “Not for a moment.”

She kissed him then, as he had kissed her in the stables, consuming him. The fires that had banked so recently flamed up again, hotter than before. She lay on top of him, breasts pressed against his flat chest, her hands in his hair. She felt him stir to life between her legs. Sitting up, she took him into herself immediately, though she knew by the noises he made that he would come before she did. She wanted him to – she wanted to feel him and watch him lose control, taking pleasure in seeing what pleasure she gave him. So she moved quickly, holding one of his hands against her breast while the other grasped her flank. She watched as he arched backwards, groaning, panting, saw the muscles of his neck stand out, his chest glistening with sweat. He couldn’t control himself, not if he wanted to, and he gasped as he came, ejaculating into her, that rush of potent liquid so unique. She kept him in her as long as she could, even as he softened. Her hands rested on his stomach, and she smiled at his post-coital face so silly, and so grateful, and so lovely.

It wasn’t until she rolled off him and back to his side that he really looked at her again.

“You didn’t…” he started.

“No. I wanted to pay attention to you.”

Steed cleared his throat. “And here I take such pride.”

“In always making women come?”

“In always making you come.”

Emma laughed. “There are other kinds of pleasures, Steed.”

“Mmmm.” He ran his hand down the front of her body and between her legs. “Still, it’s hardly fair.”

“Well, you know, there are ways…”

“Yes, I know.”

He began with her mouth, kissing his way around her lips, down her chin and neck, paying special attention to all those sensitive spots he had discovered through exhaustive experimentation. Emma suspected that he was re-learning her, to determine if what had once worked still did. He paused at her breasts, nuzzling them, taking a nipple into his mouth to gently suck until she groaned, throwing her arms back over her head to give herself over entirely to his ministrations. His progress down her body was methodical – torturously so. She’d often thought the Ministry had missed out in not making this a method of interrogation – before Steed was done with her, she would have revealed every state secret she ever knew, and more that she would make up.

Her legs opened reflexively before he even settled between them, and even when he did he waited, stroking and kissing her inner thighs, making her throb just for his touch. His fingers parted her and he placed a single, absurdly chaste kiss at her center.

“You’re a sadist,” she said, trying very hard not to writhe.

“I hardly think this is sadistic,” he chuckled.

“You are not in my position.”

“Is it all right?”

“God, yes.”

He began gently, easing her back into this strange intimacy that had been a feature of their sex life. She’d always found it more intimate than regular sex – it required more trust. And it had been a long time. Peter didn’t like oral sex, either giving or receiving. Though he had obliged her when she asked, he never initiated, and she fancied he was relieved when she stopped asking. But Steed…Steed liked it. It was a source of pride for him, as he confessed, but he also enjoyed it of his own account. Emma had discovered that that was necessary.

He was good at it. Entirely too good, sometimes, as now when he kissed and licked her clitoris, then dropped lowered, holding her open so he could enter her with his tongue. She tangled her hands in his crisp grey hair and let him do as he liked, knowing that he would bring her to heights that no man ever had. She moaned, begging him, encouraging him, trying to hold herself still so that she wouldn’t inadvertently hurt him. His lips and tongue and teeth became the center of her world, until she couldn’t bear any more, and arched back. Her whole body was a mass of white light. She screamed his name as she hadn’t screamed it in ten years.

She was hardly aware of anything until she found herself being wrapped in strong arms, panting against his chest.

“Oh, I did miss you,” she gasped.

The bastard chuckled. “You said that before.”

“I mean it. Oh, God.”

They held each other. Emma had not been held in a long time. The last barrier was falling down. The fears and inhibitions, the regrets crumbled around her and it was just this: them. Steed and Mrs. Peel. John and Emma. Older, not much wiser, and still as connected by the head and the heart and the loins as they had been for those few wonderful years they’d had each other. Emma began to slip into a dazed sleep, curled against his chest. She felt his lips on her brow.

“My darling,” he whispered. “My love.”

She was home.


End file.
